root salad Solasta
More of those annoying young people getting brilliant with folk music, reckons Jude Rogers.
crowdfunding brilliant debut albums, rein- venting traditional wheels, and adding new ideas to folk music with impressive lashings of technique and energy. How dare they?
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But that’s Solasta for you, one of the sparkiest, liveliest new trios around. Build- ing English, Celtic and Gaelic influences into their traditional sets and original compositions, as well as a love of jazz and ambient music, they come from different corners of the UK: cellist/singer Hannah Thomas from the South Walian coastal town of Porthcawl, violinist/singer Elisa- beth Flett from Tayport near Dundee, and guitarist/singer Jamie Leeming from Lon- don, where the band all live now. They’re all impressive students of music, with first- class degrees and MAs swimming around them, but their approach doesn’t feel aca- demic or swotted. Instead it sounds vividly imaginative and intuitive, as if this trio are immersing themselves in traditional music’s possibilities.
Hannah Thomas speaks cheerily on the phone from Deptford, South London, near the Trinity Laban where she studied. Her musical life has been gloriously varied so far: taken round folk clubs as a child by her parents who were in a Victorian musical hall duo, she’s currently deputising on cello in the West End production of the musical Wicked (“it’s great fun!” she laughs). Solas- ta began in embryonic form when she met Elisabeth in August 2014, she explains, on the Folkworks summer school. “Us kids – we were kids, really – had to organise our own concert, without any help from the teach- ers. Elisabeth and I played together in that and we just clicked.” After that, Hannah “absolutely knew” they had to play with each other again.
They entered a fiddle competition at
London’s Cecil Sharp House the following February, with Elisabeth as lead, and recruit- ed friend-of-a-friend Jamie Leeming to add some guitar to this arrangement (he had studied jazz as an undergraduate and post- graduate, before falling in love with folk through the music of Scottish harper Catri- ona McKay). Their chemistry as a trio was instant, and at Cecil Sharp House – of course – Elisabeth won. In October, they recorded their first EP together, then Celtic Connec- tions asked them to perform at their Jan- uary festival. “And then they said, ‘What’s your name?’ We still didn’t have one!”
h, young people today. They could be staring wearily at their smartphones or aimlessly skulk- ing around, but instead they’re
Although they were “very nearly” called Routes, they thought a name that reflected their mutual love of ancient cultures, songs and mythology would work better. They chanced on the word “solasta” in Scottish Gaelic, meaning luminous and bright, and it seemed perfect, Hannah says. “We loved how it was positive and shining, and that’s how we feel making this music.” That first EP, eponymously named, gleamed with variety. The Cowslip Set began with menacing cello drones and impressively percussive guitar, then The Sea Set rippled with raw, lyrical beauty. The trio’s friendship deepened as they kept practising. “We’re best friends, or like extended family now, really,” Hannah says; they go to parties and book clubs together. “And we’re the first people we go to when anything happens in our lives.”
This close connection helps gives Solas-
ta’s music its intimacy, and mood of instinc- tive invention. When they meet to rehearse, each Solasta member brings along a few tunes to work on “like a skeleton,” Hannah explains, which they improvise around; they then record these versions raw and take them home to explore how to add to them. Thomas is particularly interested in adding effects and textures that bring new mean- ing to the music, having done a short course on ASMR Embodied Music at university. On Solasta’s debut LP, A Cure For The Curious, this has resulted in some beautiful, cinemat- ic moments: the shivering of strings at the beginning of Whitecaps conjuring up the bubbling of waves, strings scraped harshly at the start of The Plate Smasher chan- nelling chaos and rage; singing bowls and Hannah’s cello tailpiece being used as per- cussion giving Irish fisherman’s song Port na bPúcaí a new life.
olasta launched their campaign to crowdfund the album just before 2017’s Sidmouth Folk Festival; Jamie made posters which he stuck to Hannah's parents' caravan. As their reputa- tion was already growing, they raised the money within a week. They then decamped to the beautiful setting of Stiwdio Felin Fach, a tiny barn studio on the rural edges of Abergavenny in Monmouthshire, owned by Alaw's Dylan Fowler. Although A Cure For The Curious was recorded in only three days, its sound is full of space and life and ambition, including on two tracks on which the band members sing, which they also do stunningly. Their version of Bedlam Boys is genuinely jolting: Elisabeth’s high voice leading us in hauntingly before Hannah’s cello drags us under the eerie current of its verses – then the song comes apart in a delirious middle-eight. “I call it our Rihanna breakdown,” Hannah laughs. A stark ver- sion of Ewan MacColl’s Terror Time is also shockingly effective; the band decided to record it as news broke of the extent of Europe’s refugee crisis.
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Atmospheric originals, like Elisabeth’s gorgeous instrumental compilation (you can hear it on this issue’s fRoots 71 compila- tion), nod towards traditional music’s past, but also point, excitingly, towards the band’s future. “That song’s like opening doorways to me, going into rooms and dis- covering things,” Hannah says. Solasta’s music as a whole sounds like that to these ears – lighting up places familiar and for- eign, and doing so with drama and delight.
Kids, eh? Long may these dazzling youngsters prevail.
solastaband.com F 19 f
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